Not a Corbynista

I’m getting quite fed up of being called a Corbynista. Not, I should add, because it’s an offensive term for someone who supports Corbyn; not because it’s reductionist, deliberately trying to imply that anyone who supports Corbyn is a left-wing revolutionary extremist; not because I dislike the dichotomy of splitting the whole of the Labour Party into two camps, Blairite and Corbynista.

I mean, I agree with all of those points. They’re just not the main reason that I hate being called a Corbynista. The main reason it really winds me up is that I don’t particularly support Jeremy Corbyn.

I don’t hate Corbyn. I like some of his ideas. And I strongly believe that the Labour Party needed to move back towards the left, having followed the Tories too far to the right and conceded too many arguments without a fight. But I can definitely see that Corbyn seems to be struggling with the “leader” part of being the party leader. He would be better, I suspect, in some kind of policy think tank where he can work through the various arguments and produce ideas for the party to consider.

Nevertheless, any expression of approval for anything that Corbyn does gets me branded as a Corbynista, and any disapproval gets me branded as a Blairite. I have already been called both. Not yet by the same person – but it feels like it’s only a matter of time.

Also, I’m not even currently a member of the Labour Party!

What I would really like is for Labour to find a leader who is willing to stand up to the Tories and fight their ideas, to develop a strong platform of moderately left-wing ideas, and to communicate those well to the public. That would be great. If they could form an electoral alliance with the SNP and/or Greens against the Tories, that would be even better.

Until then, I will carry on watching with interest, and hoping that things improve enough that I no longer feel unwelcome in the party that I have been a member of for much of my adult life.